The Woman From His Dreams
by jugglequeen
Summary: This time he was at the receiving end of a vision, and it worried him. He had to get to her as quickly as possible.


His abilities have helped him to get here. They can be of real use sometimes, as much as Jackson curses them because most of the time they make his life more difficult instead of easier. He lost his parents because of them. When they were shot in order to get to him he only managed to escape because of his power to make people see what he wants them to see. He created a false reality and let everyone believe he shot himself in the head, including his birth mother who later held a speech at the morgue to what she believed was his corpse in a body bag. What she said touched him deep inside but it also overwhelmed him. He wasn't able to handle the sobs and tears of a woman he knew but then again didn't know.

He had dreamed of this woman when he was little and had shared his visions with her when he was a teenager, their heads aching in unison. He can't explain how it worked, he just sent the signals out and felt they were being received. Always by the same person, a redheaded tiny woman with friendly blue eyes and a warm smile. It had eased his pain and his fear to know that there was someone out there experiencing the same thing. It made him less of a freak.

Three days ago, it was the other way around, Jackson was at the receiving end of the visions, but they didn't consist of a global pandemic or a ufo hovering in the night sky, and that was exactly what worried him. The visions he shared with her this time led him to a silent pond where she was sitting in a wooden rowing boat. The boat had no oars, it just floated aimlessly around on the water and he was watching her from the shore. The silence was deafening. There was no rippling of waves, no chirping of birds, no rustling of leaves. No sounds at all. As if the place was dead. It scared him. He got in his car and drove 30 hours straight. Sometimes it helps to be some kind of superhuman, he never needed much sleep.

And now he's here, the functional building of the George Washington University Hospital rising up to the dark night sky. As Jackson doesn't know her name and wouldn't know who to ask for at the reception, he stays put in his car in the parking lot until he shows up, the tall man who was with her when he faked his death. Jackson follows him inside, past the reception, up the stairs taking two at a time, into the hallway on the fourth floor and up to a room the man vanishes into without bothering to knock. Jackson stays behind in the hallway, breathing deeply through his nose in order to get his brain activity level down. He wants to step before them as himself today, not as Peter Wong, the pick up artist, but as Jackson Van De Kamp, their biological child.

He opens the door softly, he doesn't want to startle them. When he makes a step into the room, the rubber soles of his sneakers silent on the linoleum flooring, he sees exactly what he feared to see for the past three days. The redheaded woman is lying in a bed, motionless and with closed eyes. There are monitors indicating her vitals, she's hooked to an IV, wires are connected to her temples. Jackson knows what this means. She's unconscious, maybe even comatose. At least, she isn't put on a ventilator but breathing on her own. The man who led him here is sitting next to her bed on one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs which only seem to exist in hospitals, his elbows propped on his thighs and his head buried in his hands.

He has no idea how to introduce himself properly in a room so oppressively silent and to people he doesn't know but are actually his blood relatives, so Jackson just asks what he has been wondering for three long days without announcing himself first.

"What's the matter with her?"

The man's posture dissolves only very slowly, his movements cumbersome as if a heavy load was on his shoulders. He turns his head in Jackson's direction, his empty eyes scanning the room for the intruder. When he sees him and realization kicks in of who is standing in front of him, he stares at him, speechless for a moment. Maybe he isn't sure if his visual nerves can be trusted.

"Jackson?" he asks incredulously. "Jackson Van De Kamp?"

Jackson nods. "Yes, sir, it's me."

"What are doing here?"

Jackson hardly recognizes the man's voice. It's so much smaller than when he heard him talk at the morgue or when he asked him to show himself in the hospital. Jackson had heard the worry in their voices, their need to know he was alright, but he wasn't able to face them then. He used his power to create a fake reality again and hid behind the appearance of a nurse to escape from the situation. Things have changed, now he's the one who is worried about them, the redheaded woman in the bed as well as the broken man beside her.

"I...uhm...I was summoned," Jackson mumbles

"Summoned?"

"Mmm," he only replies with a quick nod in the woman's direction.

"Oh, I see. Another vision shared by the two of you."

Only now is the man rising from his chair and closing the gap between them. Now that they are standing in front of each other, it's obvious they look quite alike: tall, lean, long arms, thick brown hair. He puts his hand on Jackson's shoulder and sighs, "good you're here, kid."

The back of Jackson's throat tightens because of the sudden closeness to who he thinks must be his birth father. "How is she?" he asks, coming back to the initial motive for his being here. "What happened to her?"

The man sighs again, then leads Jackson to the bed. He shoves a chair to the other side and motions for him to sit down before he resumes his place opposite him.

"Several gunshots. She lost a lot of blood." His voice is raucous and too weak for a man this tall and broad.

Jackson is shocked. Is he supposed to lose a third parent to gunshots? His terror must be readable on his face because the agent hurries to tell him, "not by the same people who shot your parents, Jackson. We worked on a completely different case. We were ambushed and she was ahead of me." He swallows and rubs his wrinkled forehead. "She simply was out of the car faster than I was. I wasn't fast enough. Had I been faster, I would've been in the front and could've taken the bullets for her. Then I would be lying here and she could be talking to you. She would be delighted, you know? I'm never going to forgive myself for having been so fucking slow if she won't get a chance to talk to you anymore."

Jackson is touched by the raw pain he hears and sees in front of him in this man's voice, face, body posture. His whole demeanor cries out how much guilt he's carrying.

One thing he heard frightens Jackson and he asks, although not wrapped in a question but in a statement, as if in so doing it was more likely his hope would come true, "but she's going to make it."

"Under the circumstances, you could say she was lucky. One bullet missed the main artery by a hairsbreadth. Some inner organs were injured though. They had to remove the spleen."

"Is she going to make it?" Jackson insists. He's not ready to lose his birth mother again now that he has just found her.

"She's tough. She's small but she's strong. We've been in a situation like this more often than I would like, she's always pulled through."

They sit in silence for a moment, the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor the only sound in the room. It's soothing in a way, as it indicates her heartbeat is steady and regular. Then Jackson realizes he still doesn't even know the most commonplace things about these people.

"What's her name?"

His counterpart looks at him with dull eyes, but then a hint of a smile is playing around his lips when he speaks of her. "Dana, her name is Dana. Dana Katherine Scully. She's a medical doctor specialized in forensic pathology. She's an FBI agent and we've been partners for almost 25 years now."

Jackson hears admiration in the man's voice but also deep affection and he wonders when being work partners had turned into life partners. Considering his birth date it must have been sometime around age six or seven into their partnership the latest. "Dana." He lets the two syllables roll off his tongue. Female names with A's in them have such a round, melodic ring to them. Dana. It's a nice name. Jackson likes it. " Erm...and your name?"

"Mulder," the man answers taciturnly.

"Mulder? That's all? Don't you have a first and middle name?"

Jackson doesn't know what to make of the man's distorted face. He remembers that the redheaded woman, Dana, called him Mulder in the morgue in the short conversation they had next to his body.

The man sighs as if in defeat. "Of course, I do. My full name is Fox William Mulder."

"Fox?"

"Now you know why I prefer to go by Mulder."

Jackson contemplates for a moment. A distant memory creeps into his head. He remembers a stuffed animal he had when he was really little, three, maybe four years old. It was a reddish-brown fox with a bushy tail, pointed nose, and dark beady eyes. It had a place of honor on his bookshelf and his mother had always told him to be extra careful with it. Had it been something to take with him when he was given up for adoption? A fine bond his birth mother wanted to establish between him and his biological roots? Then something else struck him about the man's name.

"William? Hmm...in the morgue...she called me William in the morgue. She said something like 'if you are William'. Was that my name before I was adopted?"

The man who wants to be called Mulder nods.

"So I was named after you?"

"There are quite a few Williams in our families, actually. Scully's father and brother are called William, referred to as Bill and Bill Jr. Her brother is still around but her father passed some years ago. My father was a William too, he's the one I got my middle name from. Scully said she named you after my father, your grandfather. I guess we would've gone by Will with you with the many Bills we already had around. But Jackson is also a nice name."

"It's the only one I know."

"Yeah. Sure."

There's a sadness resonating in his response. The remorse Jackson heard in Dana's words in the morgue and the disillusionment shining through in Mulder's reaction now give him an impression of how they had suffered throughout the years since they made the decision to give him up.

"You call her Scully? Not Dana?"

"It's a habit from when we started working together and never unlearned. You're not the first person to find it strange but for us, it's the most natural thing."

"Oh, I don't find it strange, not at all. It's cool. Better than one of those sappy pet names married people seem to have for each other." His own parents, may they rest in peace, called each other by their first names, putting a 'yes, dear' or 'please, love' in occasionally. He had been spared the poppyheads, honeybunches, and snookums he heard at his friends' houses and which made him gag. He had never heard a couple call each other by their last names, though, and wonders if it has any meaning beyond being a habit they never got rid of. Fox here doesn't like his first name, that much is clear, but why Dana is fine with being called Scully by him, Jackson doesn't understand. This woman's personality has many interesting facets he's only beginning to explore.

"I tried to picture her since I first came to the understanding that I had two mothers. That there was a birth mother somewhere in addition to my, uh...other mother."

'Real' had been on the tip of his tongue but it feels unfair. Unfair to Dana. If he labeled Helen Van De Kamp his real mother, what would Dana be then? Not a real mother as in only an illusion? A hallucination? Fake? Dana is his biological mother, the woman who gave birth to him. They had been physically connected by the umbilical cord for nine months. He carries her DNA. If all of this wasn't real, what was?

"My parents never kept it a secret that I was adopted, so from early on I knew that I hadn't grown in my mother's belly but in another woman's. It didn't bother me that much really. Frankly, I didn't think it was that uncommon. I must have been four or five when I started dreaming of a certain woman a lot, and after a while, I believed that she must be the one, the one with the belly I had grown up in. She had red hair and blue eyes and, uh, wait..." Jackson, hand to his brow, throws Mulder a questioning look, "does she even have blue eyes?"

"Yes. She has deep blue eyes. They are much like yours, actually. You had just been born when I told her you had her color and her eyes. It was so obvious you were her child. "

"Hmm," Jackson only replies. It's giving him chills to be finally sitting in the same room with people who could tell him something about the first year of his life. It has been completely unaccounted for so far. As if he hadn't existed before his first birthday.

He tried to get information from the adoption agency once he was old enough to file a formal inquiry on his own behalf but got disappointed when he found out his folder was sealed, the information in it classified, something called a closed adoption. His birth mother had demanded it, the social worker told him, leaving him with no legal rights to obtain any information about her identity. Jackson would've liked to ask the lady with the contrite face shrugging her shoulders in an apologetic gesture why his birth mother kept sneaking herself into his head then if she didn't want him to find her, but how on earth was he supposed to make her understand what he was talking about? So he dropped it and paid more attention to the woman's appearances in his imagination from then on: how she looked, moved, sounded.

She remained a mystery.

"Anyway, when I was little, I couldn't make much of the dreams but they weren't bad or anything so I was fine with them. When I hit puberty things started to change though. I had seizures that went along with visions which weren't so innocent anymore. Some of them were actually quite disturbing, especially when I realized the woman from my childhood dreams was in them, or rather..."

Jackson leaves the last sentence unfinished, mainly because he lacks the right words to describe the exceptional experiences he had, but Mulder pushes impatiently driven by his thirst for understanding what the connection between them had been like.

"She wasn't exactly in them like in the dreams. She was rather simply there somehow while I was having them. She was watching them with me as if she was standing next to me. I felt her presence and I heard her groan like me because of this nagging pain in our heads. But then again, they were only visions, nothing real. It was strange. I mean, nothing of this was really happening, it was only an imagination, but still...uh, sorry, it's difficult to explain," Jackson sighs, raking his fingers through his hair.

"No, you're doing great, Jackson. How did you know this woman in your dreams and visions was your mother, uhm...birth mother?"

Mulder's excitement it palpable. It's the first time Jackson doesn't encounter total incomprehension, disbelief, or even fright when he talks about his experiences. Mulder listens to him with an open mind, absorbing his words like a sponge. It's a good feeling not to be looked at like he was some eccentric, a monstrosity who belonged in a freak show. It encourages Jackson to tell his entire story for the first time, even the things he had kept to himself all those years for fear of sounding stupid.

"I have no idea. I...just knew. Maybe from the dreams I had when I was a kid. In them, she always smiled lovingly at me, she sang lullabies, read stories. Mom's stuff."

"I see."

"I had this one recurring dream where we were at the beach, our naked feet sinking into the sand where the waves were lapping ashore. I was afraid of the ocean because I'd never seen it before but the moment she took my hand my fears were forgotten."

"It sounds just like her. Scully loves the ocean, her father was a Navy captain. She would've taken you to the beach, for sure."

"In my dreams, I always felt protected and cared for because she was there. I was never afraid or insecure, and the feeling somehow lingered on even in the real world. It helped me cope with the seizures and the visions which honestly frightened the hell out of me. I didn't understand what was happening to me. Nobody did. My parents didn't know what to do with me, so they sent me to a shrink who was also clueless. She prescribed pills for the seizures but they had no effect at all, so I after a while I didn't take them anymore. Knowing that she," Jackson casts a glance at the ginger-haired woman in the bed whose blue eyes are still closed, "had the same visions like me made them less terrifying. I wasn't alone in this, someone who I knew cared for me shared my fear, and so it was only half as bad. In the morgue she said she wished she'd been there to ease my pain...well, in a way, she was."

Mulder stares at him for a beat, his face a stone mask. The only movements are his teeth grinding so severely, Jackson fears he might break his jaws. Then his face contorts into a grimace, pain, and sadness written all over it. "It would be so great if you could let her know," he says, checking the monitors for any changes of her vitals. "It was her greatest concern that because you were given up for adoption you doubted yourself, that you thought you weren't worthy to be loved. It kept her awake at night."

The more Jackson hears about how Dana had coped - or rather not coped - with his adoption, the more he feels for her. She had struggled way more with the consequences of her decision than he had, his childish ignorance a blessing. And along with her the man in front of him had suffered, his birth father.

"You really didn't give me up because you wanted to get rid of me, did you?"

"What? No! Not at all! You were a blessing, Jackson! Our miracle! I had told Scully once to hope for a miracle and we got our miracle in you. Nothing and no one has made her happier than you, and sadder once you were gone. I'd always thought she was pretty but pregnant Scully was stunningly beautiful. Radiant. My rational, no-nonsense partner had turned into a round, soft bundle of emotions. It was delightful and it even increased after she'd given birth to you. It took my breath away every time I saw her with you. She beamed with elation. She was so at peace with the world despite the hell she'd been through to get to this point in her life. It filled me with so much joy I almost exploded. Motherly Scully was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. If we could've only held on to our miracle, we would've had the best of lives together."

Jackson gets the impression that Mulder spoke the last sentences more to himself than to him. Along with his narrative, his birth father has lost himself in his bittersweet memories, gazing in abstraction. Jackson is deeply moved and thinks hard about something nice to say.

"The Van De Kamps were the best parents I could imagine, but I guess you guys would've been quite okay too."

Mulder shows him a smile but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"My parents hadn't been the best examples to prepare me for my fatherly role but Scully knew what family was all about. She had the most wonderful mother and a very protective father. She would've been...she was...a terrific mother. Giving you up was an act of motherly love, Jackson. It tore her apart, but she wanted to get you out of harm's way at all costs and hiding you in a family with no connection whatsoever to us was the only possible way. Actually, now that I think of it, it was good your parents gave you a new first name. It perfected the setup. Scully knew she would never get over it, but she went through with it nonetheless. For you."

Mulder's raving narrations of Dana's qualities as a mother have an effect on Jackson. He's overwhelmed by a sudden need for physical contact with her which he finds a bit embarrassing but still, he asks, "can I touch her?"

"Of course! You can also talk to her if you want. She might hear us. Maybe you can do what I haven't been able to do...bring her back."

Jackson cautiously reaches out for her, grazing the back of her hand with his fingertips. For a split-second, he's worried he might disturb her, but then he calls himself foolish for the thought as this is exactly his intention. He covers her entire hand with his which is easy because her hand is tiny compared to his. Her skin is soft and warm. She's got nice hands. He imagines how they would've caressed his face or ruffled his hair if it had meant to be, how they would've prepared sandwiches for school or put a band-aid on a bleeding knee. He has problems to picture how these delicate fingers cut open a dead body or pull the trigger of a cold weapon.

Jackson feels the corners of his mouth rise into a smile on their own accord. It feels good to touch her. They are reunited after all those years. She's the only mother he has left. He loved his mama, Helen Van De Kamp. She was a great mother - patient, empathetic, supportive, loving, caring. When he thinks about how she was shot in the head his stomach churns. Well, the men who did this to her and to his father paid bitterly for it. It was one of the moments his abilities came in very handy. Those assholes had no idea how he was able to manipulate them with his powers into shooting themselves. Mulder and Dana instantly grasped what had happened at the hospital reception. They're smart, or maybe they just understand what his powers consist of because they know where they come from. If he puts two and two together, his extraordinary abilities made him an adoptive child. He already had them, or some, when he was a baby. That's why Dana thought she was bringing him to safety with giving him up. These two people might eventually give him the answers he's been longing for as long as he can remember. The answers to why he is such a freak.

But to be able to give him answers, she has to wake up.

Jackson shoves his chair closer to the headboard of the bed. It's slightly elevated, probably to make it easier for her to breathe. Holding on to her hand, he leans in and starts talking. To his surprise, the words start flowing out of his mouth without thinking. He had racked his brain more than once about what he would say to his birth mother if he ever had the chance. What he hears himself say now is something completely different.

"Hi, Dana, it's me. Jackson. Jackson Van De Kamp. You sent for me, right? You shared your vision with me. I saw you in that boat on the lake. You were about to let go, but then again you didn't. You looked at me as I was standing on the shore." Mulder moans silently but Jackson cannot be distracted. "Here I am, Dana. I'm here to get to know you better. I meant what I said at the gas station. I'm sure you figured out that the pick up artist was me controlling your perception of me. I also heard what you said at the morgue, and I'm sorry I had to put on that act. I simply didn't know what else to do. I want you to know that I believe you when you say you didn't give me up because you didn't want me but because you loved me. I guess I have always known."

Mulder can't take it anymore. He jumps off his chair and after a few big strides, he's crossed the entire room to stare out the window. Jackson doesn't cast a glance at him, he's completely focused on the message to his birth mother.

"You need to wake up, Dana. Don't go there, as much as you would want because it's warm and bright and there's no pain over there and all your deceased loved ones are on the other side waiting for you. You have to stay in this world. With us, Mulder and me. You said you wished we had a chance to know each other. Well, here it is, your chance. All you have to do is open your eyes. Throw me the rope and let me pull you ashore."

And then it just slips out of his mouth, completely not on purpose and completely unexpectedly. "Please, mom."

Mom. The word tingles in Jackson's ear like a blast injury.

He once stood too close to his dad firing at the range. He wasn't wearing ear muffs and was diagnosed with an acoustic shock when days later he still heard the sound of the shot. It feels very similar right now. The word, just three letters, echos in his ear, bouncing off the walls of his auditory canal. Mulder also seems in shock, Jackson hears him suck in his breath.

"What?" Jackson hiccups for his part, "wh-where did that come from? I-I...I didn't mean to...I...ugh, I don't know."

Mulder's eyes are on him but Jackson can't look at him right now. He's not sure what his face offers as an explanation, whether Mulder can see how for a moment he feels he betrayed his mama calling Dana mom. Mama, the woman who raised him, who kissed his bruises better, comforted him when his favorite cat died and cheered him on at the baseball field. Would she believe she's been replaced already? A pang of guilt makes itself felt in the pit of his stomach.

"In my head, I've always referred to her as my birth mother, never as...mom."

"It's okay, Jackson, there's no need to justify yourself. You're overwhelmed. This has simply been too much. You're traumatized by your parents being shot and us arriving on the scene, I totally understand. You set the pace, kid. We are willing to be to you whatever you want us to be. Allies, friends, confidants. Parents, if you let us. I only wished Scully could've heard that. It'd make her so happy. You have to understand, she was never being spoken to as mom. By any of her children."

"Children? I have siblings?"

Jackson sees that this is another painful chapter of their lives. His birth father's face falls apart and a wave of grief wafts off of him.

"Scully was an unwilling participant of a secret program conducted by a shadow government. I will tell you more about it when the time is right, not today. This program is the reason why we are where we are at this very moment. She had a biological daughter who had been created with her DNA but she knew nothing about until she was three years old and incurably sick. Her name was Emily. She died only days after Scully had found her. All Scully could do was accompany her on her way to death, and she did so courageously. Emily never learned about their special connection and why Scully cared for her so dearly. And she never called her mom. That's the short version," he concludes.

"Am I right when I say that my life has also been influenced by this program you mentioned?"

"Yes. When Scully became pregnant, we feared the truth but hoped against all odds that you were a normal, healthy baby like the hundreds of thousands of other babies that were conceived every day on this planet. This time no petri dish had been involved, so there was cause for hope. When you were born, we still nurtured that hope, and for a short time, we were allowed to be happy and carefree with you. Then things changed for the worse. I had to leave to keep the both of you safe and Scully had to learn you were indeed special, that you had...abilities and that there were people out there who were after you because of them. She fought for you, believe me. Fiercely. But when your opponents have so much more power than you, when they have so many more resources, you get to a point where you realize that you don't stand a chance against them. The day Scully had reached this point, all she could think of was for you to have a normal life without fear. It was more important to her than anything else."

"So you weren't around when the decision was made to give me up. It was hers alone, wasn't it?"

Mulder's chin drops to his chest. He avoids Jackson's eyes when he mumbles, "yes, and I hate myself for having put this load on her. You have to know, she not only thinks she failed you, she also never stopped thinking she failed me. Failed as in she'd taken my son from me. Complete BS! As if I was in a position to blame her for anything," he huffs.

Jackson has the feeling he's talking about more than just the decision to give him up for adoption. The relationship of his birth parents seems to be multi-layered and complicated. Maybe he will get the whole picture one day when they are willing to open up about their entire history together and not only about the short time he was present in their lives. Right now isn't the right moment to further mull over it. At present, there are more important issues.

Mulder seems to be of the same opinion because he leaves his spot near the window and resumes his place at his partner's bed. He takes her hand and strokes it lovingly. Leaning into her he speaks to her, his voice touchingly raw.

"Scully, you have to wake up, William is here. Your son is here."

Jackson flinches when he hears the unfamiliar name but he understands what Mulder tries to do and he thinks he could even get used to it. One day, he might be able to accept William as the name his birth parents have for him, like a parental pet name. They're the only family he's got left.

"Scully, please. We need you, Will and I. I already told you once in a situation like this that I didn't believe you were ready to go yet, and today I'm telling you the same. Open your eyes and meet your son, Scully."

Mulder kisses her forehead and slumps back into the chair which creaks properly. It's evident how lost he is, how numb in the fear for her.

Jackson himself is at a loss about what else he can do, but then something his mama always told him comes to mind. "You cannot study on an empty stomach, Jackson," she would say when he spent hours at his desk studying for exams. She would ruffle his hair and place a plate with homemade brownies next to his textbooks. She told him to take a break and have a snack and that after that he would be able to focus all the better. Jackson has the heavenly smell of his mother's brownies in his nose and their rich, chocolatey taste on his tongue. Tears prick at his eyes. He hasn't had a real chance to deal with his parents' assassination yet and in moments like these, when sweet childhood memories sneak into his mind, he has no defense mechanism against them. He's glad that Mulder's paying more attention to the patient in the bed than to him, so brushing the tears from his cheeks pass unnoticed. He then decides to follow his mama's advice.

"There's a vending machine in the waiting area. Can I get you something, Mulder?"

"Nah, I'm good."

No, you aren't, Jackson thinks. He searches his pants pocket for money and finds two five-dollar bills and a few coins. He steps out of the room and sets out to where the vending machines are located near the reception.

"Hungry?" a nurse asks him when he assesses the offer.

"Yeah," Jackson answers, uncertain what to choose. He has no idea what Mulder likes. He inserts a note into the slit, the display tells him he deposited five dollars and asks him to make a selection. "Chocolate never harms," he mumbles and presses the button to release a Snickers bar, then opts for some M&Ms. A bag of chips, in case he prefers something salty, and a red bag of Skittles for himself. He pushes the candy into the pockets of his hoodie and tucks the chips under his arm. He scans the room but doesn't find what he's looking for.

He turns to the nurse behind the reception desk. "Excuse me, ma'am, can I get a coffee anywhere?"

"Sure, there's a coffee machine down the hallway but the coffee tastes awful."

Jackson shrugs his shoulders. "Ah well, it'll have to do. As long as it's hot."

"Who are you visiting, young man?" the friendly nurse asks. She's in her thirties probably, has warm eyes and shows him a compassionate smile.

"Dana Scully," Jackson answers.

"Oh, the FBI agent who got shot."

"Yes, that's her."

"I'm sorry, it must be hard for you to see your mom so severely injured."

She's not my mom, Jackson has on the tip of his tongue but then realizes that the nurse is indeed right. Dana Scully, the FBI agent who got shot, is his mom. He has even called her exactly that a few moments ago: mom. As confusing as the notion is, it's also warming his heart and he hears himself say, "yes, it's not easy."

"You want the coffee for your dad?"

"Uhm, yes. He's drained. I've got to get some food into him, and some caffeine wouldn't harm either, I guess."

"Absolutely. I sent him away to have a shower and some sleep this morning after he'd been keeping vigil at her bed for more than 24 hours, but he returned only two hours later."

"He's very worried."

"Well, understandable. Her chances are not bad though. She's in good shape, her overall constitution is above average for her age. The surgeon who performed the emergency operation told me he never believed someone could survive a gunshot wound as severe as this. Your mom is strong, and I bet she knows you and your dad are here. Just be patient and don't lose hope. She can regain consciousness any time." She smiles reassuringly at the teenager in front of her, totally oblivious to what her well-meant words do to him. "Here," she says, placing a mug with a pink imprint on the counter, "have some of our coffee." She fills the mug, probably her private one, from a thermos she conjures from under the counter. "Sugar? Milk?"

What now? Jackson doesn't know how Mulder drinks his coffee. Is he a cappuccino double foam type or rather a black like my soul? "Black, please," he finally decides. If Mulder wants sugar and milk, he can come back. "Thanks, you're very kind."

His hands full of the provisions he managed to provide, Jackson walks back to Dana's room. The nurse said that she's strong, that she can regain consciousness any time. He hopes to God she's right. He has so many questions for her, and he wants to tell her about his childhood and youth, that it was good and that she doesn't have to blame herself anymore. He's about to pass through the doorframe when he hears someone say, "he's alone out there? He's in danger! Go, look for him!"

Jackson knows this voice, he heard it before from inside a body bag. The mug almost slips out of his hand. He takes a tentative step inside and the view he catches takes his breath away. The head section of the bed is elevated higher than before, Dana's upper body being almost upright and her eyes are...open. But they aren't looking at him, they are fixed on the man next to her bed.

"I can't believe you let him go alone, Mulder. They're after him, remember? Bring him back here right now!"

Is it possible this woman was unconscious half an hour ago? The intensity with which she's scolding Mulder makes it hard to believe. Jackson commiserates with him. The man has spent three days at her bedside without considerable sleep and probably without food and drink, he had to cope with his biological child showing up out of thin air, and now he gets a lecture because he didn't accompany his teenage son to the vending machine. If it wasn't so damn surreal, it would be funny.

Jackson coughs, and when his birth parents' heads turn in his direction, he murmurs, "I'm here. Unscathed."

The room is silent within the fraction of a second.

What happens next is kind of a blur to Jackson. The world around him seems to keep turning but inside this room, it has come to a halt or is turning slower at any rate. He feels like being underwater, where the sounds from above the surface are muffled and one's movements are harder because of the water resistance. He looks into his birth mother's - his mom's - eyes and contrary to the last time he had done the same thing, unbeknownst to her, he sees his own eyes reflected in hers. He's familiar with that face beaming at him the way it's beaming at him right now, with that blissful smile and that loving gaze. He knows it's irrational, he's paid attention in biology class when they studied the human brain and its power of recollection, but he swears deep down in his brain there is a memory of her, how she looked at him exactly like this when he was a baby. It's contradicting the scientific facts but the heck with it, he isn't a normal human being, human science doesn't apply to him anyway.

Jackson's musings are interrupted by a weak whisper. "Thank you, dear Lord," he hears her voice which has a completely different timbre than moments ago when she was vigorously telling her partner to go look for him.

Mulder squeezes Dana's shoulder gently, unable to take his eyes off of her as if he waited all his life to see this. Only when she folds the blanket back, obviously getting ready to leave the bed, he intervenes. "Woohoo, Scully, no! No way are you getting out of this bed! You stay right where you are!" Pinning her down forcefully with the hand that only seconds ago touched her so feathery, he looks at Jackson. "Would you mind coming over here? We have a very unreasonable patient here." But Jackson feels glued to the spot where he's standing, coffee mug in one hand, precariously tilted, bag of chips in the other. As much as he wants to, his feet won't move. Mulder lets go of Dana, not without shooting her a stern look telling her quite cleary he wants her to stay put, then walks over to Jackson. "Hand me the mug before you spill it," he says and takes the piece of pottery from him. He looks at the pink, glittery imprint and chuckles. "Born to be a Girl Boss. That's actually your mug, Scully, isn't it?"

"Oh shut up, Mulder," she rebukes him, her vocal cords apparently having straightened again.

"Back from the unconscious for barely a quarter of an hour and already a big mouth again. Case closed. Your mug," Mulder retorts putting the piece of evidence to his lips and taking a gulp for Dana and Jackson to see the imprint. He tries to hide his smile behind it but fails.

"Don't be such a sissy, Mulder. I'll buy you a mug saying Mr. Awesome as soon as I'm out of here if it makes you happy."

"How about World's Best Badass Partner?"

"If you insist."

"I do."

"Consider it done, Mulder. I'll get you one of those travel mugs. You can bring it to the office every single day and show it around for everybody to see with a big, fat smirk on your face."

"Sounds lovely when you put it like this."

Jackson can't believe what's happening in front of his eyes. Here they are, all three of them at a life-altering moment. A blink of an eye ago, Dana was at the threshold to death, Mulder to insanity, and Jackson to losing his youthful optimism for good, and now they have nothing better to do but banter about the imprint on a stupid mug? It has broken the spell they've found themselves in, for sure. Maybe that has been their intention, although Jackson doubts they're acting like this on purpose. Their banter seems so natural and effortless as if being the result of years of practice. In a way, he's relieved they've lightened the atmosphere by it because as every teenager in the world he hates tawdry sappiness. "How about I buy you a set saying Partners in Crime?" he tries to join in and it doesn't remain without effect. Both Dana's and Mulder's heads turn and they look at him as if for a moment they'd forgotten that he's even there. From one second to the next, Dana's face is serious again and the room is filled anew with the heaviness of the situation. "I've been hoping for this to happen. I prayed and hoped against all reason. And now it's happening, truly happening," she breathes.

"You...erm...you sent for me. The visions. They came from you, didn't they?" At least Jackson's vocal cords are still doing their job if his legs must quit the service. He's still standing in the middle of the room a bit at a distance from his birth parents.

"I have no recollection of what I've been doing these past few days, I'm afraid. I'm not even sure this is real," she says.

"It is real. I am real," Jackson assures her. He takes a cautious step toward her bed, positioning himself at the foot of it.

"You have been talking to me."

Jackson nods.

"You told me to wake up, didn't you? You too, Mulder."

"Yes, Scully. We hoped you'd hear us."

"It's scientifically proven that depending on the depth of the comatose state an unconscious person can perceive their surroundings, that they hear sounds, feel touches or temperature swings. So, yes, I heard you. Both of you. You said nice things. Very nice things."

Mulder and Jackson exchange a look, both guessing what she might be referring to.

"You mean you heard me when in all my pathetic need for you I told you for the millionth time that I can't live without you? That I'm helpless as a puppy when I'm on my own?"

Mulder has wrapped a joke around his questions but there is more than just a kernel of truth buried in there. The intensity with which these two people cling to each other is palpable. Jackson had seen his adoptive parents in love with each other, both deeply rooted in a solid marriage and an interplay of unconditional trust and loyalty, but his birth parents seem to have a relationship so symbiotic, he wonders how big the chances are to find a match this perfect among the seven billion people inhabiting this planet. Mulder and Dana appear like one human entity rather than two independent beings. You cannot harm one without hurting the other, one cannot be happy with the other being sad, one can simply not be without the other. Utter co-dependancy, that's what Jackson sees when he looks at Dana and Mulder.

Being a child to a couple capable of giving so much selfless love must be a wonderful place to grow up in, comes to his mind. What a shame it has never happened. What has He been thinking to begrudge them children to raise? The love these two people have to give would've been enough for a whole bunch of them, including himself. The thought brings Jackson back to the moment he had said what Dana called nice things to her. Mulder tried to take the edge off it with his sad attempt to be funny but the pink elephant in the room is so big it takes almost the entire space. Jackson needs to address it.

"You heard me call you mom."

Tears instantly well up in Dana's eyes, intensifying their blue color to a degree it's almost hypnotizing. She's obviously struggling for words and losing the battle. She opens her mouth but no sound emits from it, so Jackson continues, "it wasn't planned but neither inconsiderately spoken. It...it came from within somehow. I'm not going to deny that I was startled when I heard myself say it, but...I'm okay with it. With you being my mom, I mean."

Taking it from the way Dana's face lightens up, his is showing that he means it. "I don't know what to say," she whispers and reaches out for Mulder. Their hands find themselves blindly and intertwine, he then leans in and kisses her temple. "You don't have to say anything, Scully. You were always meant to be a mother and now you're reunited with your son. Finally."

"He's your son too, Mulder."

Mulder nods. They're gazing at each other so intensely, Jackson almost wants to wave at them and tell them that he's also in the room, but then they tear their eyes away from each other and look at him. Dana holds her other hand out and now Jackson is finally able to move. He leaves his spot at the foot of the bed where his fingers have been clutching the footboard, closes the gap to her and willingly takes her hand. It's as warm and soft as before when he spoke to her when she was still unconscious, but it feels so much better now. The energy she emits is electrifying. It passes through his whole body and empowers him in a way he hasn't expected. It's almost as if after these past weeks that have been so dark since his parents, the Van De Kamps, were murdered she's breathing life into him again. On his lonely road trip he felt like he was drowning in a cold, deep ocean with no chance for rescue, and now the woman who gave birth to him once is pulling him out of the water into a life raft where he is protected and cared for and...loved.

Maybe it was all meant to happen like this, Jackson thinks. The Van De Kamps, the best parents in the true sense of the word, have taught him to believe that God has a plan, that everything happens for a reason. Maybe he was to reunite with his birth parents, who are equally devoted to him, exactly at the moment his adoptive parents were taken from him so he wouldn't be alone. Dana gave him up at a moment she couldn't protect him anymore in the strong belief he was safer and happier with other people. And he had been safe and happy with his adoptive parents. Until he had those visions that someone tried to track him down, to get at him because of his abilities. Thenceforward, the Van De Kamps didn't know how to help and protect him any longer.

They tried, moved from the rural countryside into a city home to give him access to psychological and medical treatment, they installed an alarm system when he told them he feared he was being hunted, but their efforts were for naught. In the end, they made the ultimate sacrifice. They gave their lives for him, delaying the killers for the decisive seconds for Dana and Mulder to arrive at the scene and chase them away. If he looks at his life like this, it sounds like a well-planned and orchestrated course of events. It had to be someone's plan, he just hopes it's been a divine plan and not one set up by men. Mean men.

"What have you got in your pockets?" Mulder asks and tears Jackson away from his significant thoughts.

Jackson pulls the Snickers bar and the M&Ms out and deposits them on Dana's lap. "Chocolate. And some Skittles, if you want."

"Too much sugar for me," Dana says in doctor's mode now, "I will be put on a bland diet for some time, I assume, given the injuries to my abdomen."

"Would something salty be okay? I also bought some chips." He places the bag of Lays on the blanket draped over Dana's legs.

"Mmmm, salt & vinegar. Good choice. Too greasy, though. Salt and fat is not a good combination for a traumatized digestive tract, but you got these for Mulder anyway, didn't you?" She turns her head to the side. "Isn't that some kind of offer to choose from, Mulder?"

"It's great, thank you, Jackson. As long as I can have all the red M&Ms, I'm happy," he says, ripping a corner off the candy bag. He picks a few red ones out with his long fingers and pops them into his mouth. "Yummm, almost as good as sunflower seeds."

"Oh," Jackson says, "I got some of those too." He searches the inside pocket of the jacket he carelessly tossed to the ground when he first stepped into the room a lifetime ago and pulls out a little bag. "I only have the ones in shells, though. I love to crack them between my teeth. It's almost meditative. It helps me concentrate."

"You've got to be kidding!" Dana murmurs and Mulder stares wordlessly at him. Jackson no longer understands the world. What's so weird about liking sunflower seeds, he asks himself. "Is something wrong? Did I say something stupid?"

"No, Jackson, there's absolutely nothing wrong," Dana's says who seems to have found her voice faster than Mulder. "I just didn't know that the craving for sunflower seeds was hereditary."

Before Jackson can process the words and ask her what she means by it, Mulder reaches into his pants pocket and pulls an identical bag out of it, also half empty. He casts it onto Dana's lap just next to the one Jackson has left there a moment earlier. She picks them both up, holding them next to each other. "Like father, like son, I'd say." She looks at them with a wide, joyful smile that is so contagious that quickly all three of them are gazing at each other with happy faces. Then Mulder breaks out in a laughter and Jackson and Dana joint in.

"Ouch," she whines, gently covering her stomach with her hands, "don't make me laugh. The dressage on my abdomen tells me I had major surgery, so would you please mind me and my sensitive body parts."

Mulder slaps his forehead with his open palm. "What have I been thinking? We need a doctor to check you out, Scully. Jackson, would you mind looking for a nurse and telling her to send a doctor in here to check her out?"

"I am a doctor, Mulder. I'm perfectly fine. I've never been better."

" Are you sure?"

"I am."

She reaches out for both of them, encircling her delicate fingers securely around their hands. Jackson is surprised about how strong she appears all of a sudden.

"I have everything I need."

A feeling of having arrived settles in Jackson's chest, like a circle has been completed. He missed his parents very much, but fate has led him to two people who equally cared for him. They loved him when he was a baby and never stopped. And he was sure that one day he will equally love them back.

For the first time in a long time, he feels good and looked at his future optimistically. With Dana and Mulder at his side, his parents now, he will be able to deal with all the demons in his life. The visions, his powers, the threats from God knows who or what - everything can be dealt with as long as they are with him. Jackson Van De Kamp aka William Scully or Mulder or Scully-Mulder is happy.

Who would have thought?


End file.
